No one to trust, nowhere to learn
How many more financial disasters are waiting to happen? How
many more sociopathic and amoral business leaders are paving the
way for their companies, and ultimately their national economies,
to travel down the path to Armageddon? If you think I am being
alarmist - good! The social cost of "getting it wrong" is at an
all-time high, and it gets higher by the day.
I am writing this on an aeroplane travelling at just under the
speed of sound. In today's business world, that is not nearly fast
enough. The Bourses, Stock Exchanges and markets still
worship sociopaths and amoral business leaders. They
reward them with high market caps. As the speed of markets and
their attendant demands increase, managers of corporations are
pressed to cut corners in order to satisfy the analysts. Quarterly
reporting may be a quick way to identify organisations that are on
the way up (and on the way down), but it seems to me that
compliance and regulatory demands increase the chances of
deliberate misreporting rather than decrease them as intended.
This situation is exacerbated by the youth and inexperience of the
people running some businesses. In one case I know of a new
European head of a US-owned firm that had to apply for a passport
because she had never left the shores of America. How was she
supposed to run a pan-European business with its diversity of
cultures and its 130 languages? A polyglot on speed could not
manage in a lifetime what this otherwise gifted person had to
contend with. How could she be expected to understand the
intricacies of European law in the 12 member states and do her job
and deliver next quarter's results, without guidance and
preparation?
An attack on the "cultural divide"? No, this runs much deeper. How
can organisations develop their managers in 2003 without throwing
them in at the deep end without a lifejacket? How can they nurture
a willingness to learn new skills and develop a culturally strong,
ethical and caring company - a company that is successful in its
market and a pleasure to work for, regardless of whether you are
the CFO or the floor-cleaner? Where is the wise counsel without a
vested interest?
I am not building a case here for reverse-ageism or so-called
'executive coaching' that's currently the thing to do for the
'at-a-loss' clients of under-employed headhunters and
psychologists. What I am talking about are the simple things that
should and must be done inside a company by people that understand
its business and desire to protect its values.
So where have all the mentors gone? In a previous life, I had the
good fortune to be an officer in a Guards Regiment in the UK. This
involved managing people in extreme circumstances at a very early
age. The system was run so that junior officers could be mentored,
not only by more senior officers but also by the much more
experienced Non-Commissioned Officers, and most importantly by the
Guardsmen (Privates) that had never been promoted but liked it that
way. These Grand Old Men within the Regiment, were not senior, but
held sway over large parts of the intimate workings of the system.
They ran all of the back-office processes that ensured that the
operation ran smoothly, with the minimum of fuss and the maximum
efficiency.
In the early 1990's the UK Government decided that these people
were surplus to requirements and offered them voluntary redundancy.
For anyone who was working for less than the much-vaunted minimum
wage, and was offered several thousand pounds, tax free, this was
too much to resist. The Grand Old Men left in droves. The result
was that things broke down, things that were taken for granted for
years no longer worked properly and the very people it was supposed
to benefit the most, were helped the least.
As corporations go from bloated and inefficient to "lean and mean",
we will have to be very careful that we do not just end up with
"mean and nasty." Outsourcing, shared services and "corporate
right-sizing" must not be allowed to pander to the gods of
efficiency and low cost at the expense of sacrificing the people
that have a role to play in forming talent and reducing the
excessive risk taking that can do irreparable damage to a company's
standing.
If corporations get rid of their Grand Old Men, at whatever level,
in the race for efficiency, the cohesiveness, accountability and
the checks and balances necessary to avoid potentially catastrophic
mistakes will be lost. Only by ensuring that managers can turn to
trusted mentors for advice, people who share their knowledge and
understanding of how to get things done and also allow their
personal interests to come second to those that need counsel, can
the risks be reduced.
In the headlong rush to efficiency a caring and ethical company is
not something that the Stock Exchanges should discourage, as these
are precisely the organisations that will last longer, become
stronger and drive the economy to the benefit of all.
PS Grand Old Men do not necessarily have to be grand, old, or even
men, they just have to be unselfish, caring and wise.
"Mentor: advisor, counsellor, teacher, guide,
guru."